


Kiss This World Goodbye

by nyctanthes



Series: Prompt Ficlets [2]
Category: Paper Girls (Comics)
Genre: 3 Sentence Ficathon, 3 Sentence Fiction, Canon Compliant, Canon typical (1980s typical) language and attitudes, F/F, First Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-18
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-10-10 20:36:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17433101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyctanthes/pseuds/nyctanthes
Summary: Time travel sucks. Except when it doesn't.





	Kiss This World Goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> Ficlet written for the 2018-19 Three Sentence Ficathon hosted on DW by rthstewart.
> 
> In response to a prompt from Alexseanchai. _Any fandom. Any character. I'm through accepting limits 'cause someone says they're so. (With bonus points for f/f queer awakening.)_
> 
> Warnings for: Mac typical language, mentions of future character death I'm assuming won't happen because they wouldn't do that to us, right?

She is going to die. Well, everyone dies. But almost no one dies the way she will: from 4DC, a time travelers' disease with no known cure in any year – not 1988 or 50,000 BC or 2171. She’s going to die before she’s thirty. Before she’s had a chance to get crusty and useless, before she'd be better off in the ground. And absolutely nothing she does will solve this problem. Exercise and flossing? Eating her vegetables? Better living through not smoking? Returning to her own timeline, to her stupid dad and stupider step-mom, promising never to leave her house again? No. No no no no. What’s done is done. They got it straight from the jackasses’ mouth.

Kaje is too stubborn to accept it. She isn’t. She’s always lived in reality. In life there are winners and there are losers. She knows which side of the line she belongs on.

That doesn’t mean she has to curl up into a scared hedgehog ball, act like a helpless kitten. Let the rest of her life, however many years there's left of it, just happen to her. The finale to her story is written, every day looking more and more like an after-school special, but how she spends the time that remains is her choice. No one makes her do anything she doesn’t want to do.

So when Kaje hints, outright declares, they should kiss because she had a _vision_ of it, because it’s _foretold_ , like she’s supposed to do something that messed up because it’s _written in the stars_. Can you blame her for going ballistic, a little crazy? She’s been ricocheting back and forth in time like a bullet shot from a gun in a closed room. (No, she doesn't need to be reminded that's an utterly retarded thing for her to say, but it's all she's got.) She feels hot and wild, dangerous and spent. She’s not diplomatic in the best of times, and these are the worst of times.

But Kaje’s face, her little face – embarrassed and scared. Sad. She didn’t intend to do that to her, shove her so hard she fell. Didn't plan to be nasty and hurtful and low. Call Kaje a pervert and a freak, like she's one of those wastoids who's always giving them grief, back home.

She doesn’t know why she gets violent, uses words as weapons.

She’s pretty sure she doesn't mean to.

She wants to grab KJ's hand. Haul her off the ground and wrap an arm around her. Apologize for being a bitch.

She doesn’t, of course. She never walks back something she’s said or done.

Lucky for her, Kaje doesn’t scare easy. She stuck with her, like she’s done since the day they met. Saved her in the most ballsy, ass-kicking way imaginable. (That’s starting to become a habit, too.)

And lest you think she's turned into a princess - cooing and fluttering her eyelashes, exchanging kisses for rescues - she did her part. Gave KJ a clue, hauled her stoned ass off the floor and to the roof, staggering under her solid weight, trying not to breathe too deeply because she's not picky but damn KJ needs a shower and a toothbrush.

When it happens, it’s surprising and yet not. Like Kaje was right, and it - the two of them, doing that - was inevitable. Fated. 

But no. It was a decision. Her decision. 

Most of what she’s learned about the future is an ending, a period, narrowing everything in her life to a fine point. A couple of things she's learned, though, aren't quite so dire. In between scrambling: to understand what the hell is happening to them, figure out who's ally and who's enemy, not be put down in the street like a rabid dog, she's had a few minutes to breathe and consider. The possibilities.

Like now. Standing on the rooftop of a skyscraper one hundred and eighty-three years in the future, having once again narrowly escaped being lobotomized by a bunch of time fanatics. Spaceships buzz across the creepy streaky sherbet sky, even as what she mostly sees are the shadows of what existed before. Waiting for Kaje to wake up, for New Girl and normal Tiff and weird and old and depressed Tiff to join them so they can flee Horrible Scenario #3. Or is it #4? She's lost track. Staring at the giant portal hanging directly over the second skyscraper to the left, the portal to hundreds of thousands of Ohios - all of which, unsurprisingly, suck. Hoping it will return her to where she's supposed to be. Where she's supposed to die.

She starts to wonder. Why shouldn't they? How could this possibly be the one thing that is too much for her – MacKenzie Coyle, not afraid of anyone, of anything including her own impending death – to try. To see how it feels. To decide if it's something she likes.

She starts to think. That she might just like it. This is Kaje, after all, and she’d do anything for her. To keep her safe. To make her smile.

Twenty minutes later she’s facing down a termite the size of a bus, and all she can think is that she’s so fucking glad that if she doesn’t get the chance to die of 4DC, that if she never sees Kaje or Tiff or New Girl again, she had the stones to move closer, stand on tip-toes and tilt her face up. Touch Kaje’s arms and say _kiss me_.


End file.
